Keyword: buyingvotes

President Obama continues his push to tweak free market forces and buy votes with an executive move that will force businesses to pay extra for overtime work of certain salaried employees. Managers earning more than $455 a week are not eligible for overtime pay, even if those "managers" are really shift supervisors at a 7-11 or fast food restaurant. The number of potential people impacted by this change is hard to quantify. The law governing oversight is rooted in the Fair Labor Standards Act 1938. In 1975, the Department of Labor set the minimum to $250 a week, which...

On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, host Candy Crowley asked a question of Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisc.) that should offend people on both sides of the aisle. “If I am an unemployed American…or if I am a minimum wage worker… why would I become a Republican?” (video follows with transcript and commentary): (video link) CANDY CROWLEY: If I am an unemployed American and I hear from Republicans that, “Yeah, you know, we should go ahead and do that provided we do the following three things,” and it’s a caveat approval of extending those [unemployment] benefits, or if I am...

Bet you didnâ€™t know that cement was really, really bad for you.Â Â Â Itâ€™s not actually bad for you, but that isnâ€™t stopping the EPA from imposing more ridiculous rules, known as MACT, that will require the cement industry to invest billions in new technology over the next two years in order to improve air quality. Hey: We may not have jobs, but take a deep breath. Can't you breath easier knowing that you'll breath easier in the unemployment line now that Obama's extending the dole? All this as Obama calls on Congress to give him more money to create more...

An associate of Jerry Brown calls Meg Whitman a "whore" over pension reform (AUDIO) October 7, 2010 | 6:22 pm In a private conversation that was inadvertently taped by a voicemail machine, an associate of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown can be heard referring to his Republican opponent Meg Whitman as a “whore” for cutting a deal protecting law enforcement pensions as the two candidates competed for police endorsements. The comment came after Brown called the Los Angeles Police Protective League in early September to ask for its endorsement. He left a voicemail message for Scott Rate, a union official....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Summoned back from summer break, the House on Tuesday pushed through an emergency $26 billion jobs bill that Democrats said would save 300,000 teachers, police and others from election-year layoffs. President Barack Obama immediately signed it into law. Lawmakers streamed back to Washington for a one-day session as Democrats declared a need to act before children return to classrooms minus teachers laid off because of budgetary crises in states that have been hard-hit by the recession. Republicans saw it differently, calling the bill a giveaway to teachers' unions and an example of wasteful Washington spending that voters...

Click here to find out more! When asked about the significance of her daughter, Chelsea, marrying Marc Mezvinsky, who is Jewish, and thus being married in an interfaith union, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded, “Over the years, so many of the barriers that prevented people from getting married, crossing lines of faith or color or ethnicity have just disappeared.” True, the barriers have disappeared, but serious difficulties remain. While some scholars argue that mixed-faith unions “serve as a refiner’s fire” that make the relationships stronger, the statistical evidence indicates this is all too frequently not the outcome. The American...

Republican Immigration Position Likely To Alienate Latinos, Obama Officials Say By Michael D. Shear Washington Post Staff Writer July 20, 2010 President Obama and his political aides privately acknowledge that the government's decision to sue Arizona over its new immigration law is helping to fuel an anti-immigration fervor that could benefit some Republicans in elections this fall. But White House officials have concluded that, over the long term, the Republicans' get-tough message is a major political miscalculation. They predict it will ultimately alienate millions of Latinos, the fastest-growing minority group in the nation. West Wing strategists argue that the president's...

PHOENIX — U.S. Sen. John McCain has pledged $5,000 to a legal fund for two Arizona sheriffs defending themselves against lawsuits over the state's new immigration enforcement law.Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu (BAB'-oh) and Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever have retained an attorney to defend their offices against federal litigation if they're prevented from implementing the law.

The White House faced fresh questions over back-room dealmaking after a Democrat acknowledged he had been encouraged by one of President Barack Obama's top advisers to apply for an international development job instead of challenging the candidate whom the president favored in a Senate race. The revelation again called into question repeated promises by Obama to run an open government that was above private political horse-trading. In appealing to voters this election year, Republicans charge that Obama's promise to change the ways of Washington has given way to the craven politics he campaigned against. Former Colorado House of Representatives Speaker...

WASHINGTON—After months of criticism that it hasn't done enough to prevent foreclosures, the Obama administration is announcing a plan to reduce the amount some troubled borrowers owe on their home loans. Discuss COMMENTS (86) The multifaceted effort will let people who owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth get new loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration, a government agency that insures home loans against default. That would be funded by $14 billion from the administration's existing $75 billion foreclosure-prevention program. But it could spark criticism that the government is shouldering too much risk by taking on...

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington Tens of thousands of people began assembling in Washington on Sunday to march for immigration reform, a politically charged issue that has been pushed to a back burner by the intense focus on healthcare. In a tactic that reflects the current economy, march organizers have tried to cast the immigration debate as part of economic recovery. "What's important today is that jobs and immigration go hand in hand," Marc Morial of the National Urban League said on Sunday in a television interview. "When you've got millions of undocumented workers working off the books, that...

Was this Yet Another Backroom Deal to Force Obama’s Bill Down the American People’s Throats? With a vote on Obama and Pelosi’s government takeover of healthcare expected tomorrow, Rep. Alan Boyd (D-FL) finally got off the fence and announced yesterday that he would vote “yes” for the bill. Boyd’s announcement came just days after one of his pet bills passed the House. Boyd is the sponsor of a bill, the Florida National Forest Land Adjustment Act of 2009 (H.R. 3954). The bill languished in committee after being introduced in October 2009. Suddenly, though, it received a vote Thursday in the...

Bye bye, Cornhusker Kickback. Hello, special treatment for Tennessee and North Dakota. Democrats unveiling revisions Thursday to their health care overhaul bill decided to kill the extra $100 million in Medicaid funds for Nebraska that has become a symbol of backdoor deal making. But the 153 pages of changes to the massive health care package include extra money for hospitals in Tennessee that serve large numbers of low-income patients. And though the bill would revamp the nation's student loan system to make the government the only lender, one bank — the state-owned Bank of North Dakota — would be allowed...

WASHINGTON — Still seeking votes for his proposed health care overhaul, President Barack Obama appears ready to reverse his position and allow unpopular deal-sweetening measures in the hopes of finding Democratic support for legislation whose future will be decided in coming days. Increasingly eager to finish work on his top domestic priority, Obama was set to head to northeast Ohio on Monday with a final sales pitch for health care legislation that the top Democratic vote-counter in the House said lacked support to pass. Obama's top political adviser, David Axelrod, said he was "absolutely confident" the measure would pass during...

what Obama will do is simply leave the money in the bank, drawing interest, until he leaves the Oval Office, and everybody forgets about it. At that time, he'll press a button. Byron York says there's some buzz going around the net over the question of what Obama has done with the $1.4 million he won as part of the Nobel Peace Prize. Well before Obama accepted the award, the White House announced he would give the money to charity. Yet it's been two months since he went to Oslo, and there's no word of him giving it away. Some...

Responding to calls among rank-and-file Democrats for more infrastructure spending, House leaders Tuesday unveiled a plan to add almost $50 billion in spending on highways, housing, and school repair as part of a year-end plan to create jobs. The measure is aimed at keeping the fragile economic recovery on track with money for teachers, the unemployed and small businesses. A vote is planned for Wednesday. The Senate, however, won't act until next month at the earliest and has less of an appetite for another costly round of economic stimulus measures. All told the measure tops $150 billion once additional help...

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Secretary of State Ross Miller announced Monday that voter registration fraud charges have been filed against an organization that works with low-income people and two of its employees in its Las Vegas office. The complaint includes 26 counts of voter fraud and 13 counts for compensating those registering voters, both felonies. The Association of Community Organization for Reform Now, Inc., also known as ACORN, operated a Las Vegas office that helped register low-income voters last year. Throughout 2008, ACORN employed canvassers to register people to vote in Nevada, the complaint said. ACORN paid the...

he Obama administration will make about $500 million available to Chrysler LLC through the end of this month as it seeks to reach an alliance with Fiat, and up to $5 billion through May to help General Motors Corp restructure outside of bankruptcy, an independent oversight report on the Treasury Department's corporate rescue fund said on Tuesday. Separately, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union urged its members to lobby the White House by phone or email to ensure that workers and retirees are treated fairly in negotiations at both companies on new concessions, which are considered vital for the automakers'...

The Obama administration acknowledged Thursday that the as-yet-unnamed Census Bureau director will have a direct line to the White House but sought to define the relationship as one in which the director would “work closely with” rather than report to President Obama’s senior staff. ***After black and Hispanic leaders raised concerns over Commerce Secretary-nominee Judd Gregg ’s commitment to core functions of the Census Bureau, a senior White House official told CQ on Wednesday that the director would report directly to the White House.*** That brought fire Thursday from Republicans, who accused the White House of attempting to gain advantage...

Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a plan by Democrats to pump $56 billion in government spending into the economy through public works projects, help for the jobless and money for states struggling with their Medicaid bills. The 52-42 tally fell well short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a GOP filibuster. The White House promised a veto anyway, saying the measure would not work and would cost too much. The House was expected to have better luck with a companion $61 billion House plan later in the day.

Examples of lawmakers who have sponsored earmarks for private companies and received campaign contributions from them and, in some cases, their lobbyists: _Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, a member of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, obtained a $2.4 million earmark last year for the Greentree Group of Beavercreek, Ohio, for a digital information sharing system. Greentree Group executives, their families and consultants have donated $43,350 to Hobson since 2000, reports The Columbus Dispatch. _Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., a member of House defense appropriations subcommittee, sponsored a $2 million earmark to 21st Century Systems last year for a virtual fence demonstration project....

When it comes to running the economy, no-one could ever accuse Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez of being a hostage to conventional wisdom. With the country's most recent statistics showing consumer price rises of 29.1% in the 12 months to the end of March - the highest rate of increase in Latin America - now might not be the best time for inflation-busting pay deals. But on 1 May, Mr Chavez gave public sector workers an across-the-board salary increase of 30%. He said maintaining people's purchasing power was a more pressing priority than getting inflation down. At the same time, he...

In the threadbare border towns of South Texas, one of the country’s poorest regions, enterprising locals like Candelaria Espinoza have long been paid to round up votes for candidates on Election Day. There is even a name for these electoral soldiers of fortune: politiqueras. So when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign arrived in South Texas in February seeking an edge in its uphill battle against Senator Barack Obama, Ms. Espinoza was happy to oblige, for a price. The campaign paid her and seven other members of her family $100 to $200 each to knock on doors, deliver fliers and...

DNC Superdelegate Puts His Vote Up For Sale Steven Ybarra Wants $20 Million For His Vote SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CBS13) â€• In this tight battle for the Democratic nomination we've heard a lot about the candidates courting superdelegates. But, one superdelegate is courting the candidates. He says he'll sell his vote for a price. A very high price: $20 million. Steven Ybarra of Sacramento says that eight-figure price is peanuts for the presidency.

Fourteen months into a campaign that has the feel of a movement, Sen. Barack Obama has collided with the gritty political traditions of Philadelphia, where ward bosses love their candidates, but also expect them to pay up. The dispute centers on the dispensing of "street money," a long-standing Philadelphia ritual in which candidates deliver cash to the city's Democratic operatives in return for getting out the vote. Flush with payments from well-funded campaigns, the ward leaders and Democratic Party bosses typically spread out the cash in the days before the election, handing $10, $20 and $50 bills to the foot...

Why Rescues Don't Work By Paul Tustain "...Just like natural organisms, the financial system must have death to evolve into a better form..." NOW THAT HE'S wearing some sort of do-good government hat, even Hank Paulson is not thinking straight.Regulate in New York and finance goes to Toronto. Regulate in London, it goes to Frankfurt or Paris - and since Toronto, Frankfurt and Paris are run by the same nervous bureaucrat-types, we can reckon soon enough that the entire financial markets will be hosted out of Singapore and Shanghai.There they will accept the risks as well as the rewards,...

College Junior Breakfasts With Chelsea Clinton 21-Year-Old Wisconsin Super Delegate Gets Face Time With Former First Daughter Noooo Chelsea is not being Pimped Out!Check out the young virgin's Wikipedia page!

The fate of $600-$1,200 rebate checks for more than 100 million Americans is in limbo after Senate Republicans blocked a bid by Democrats to add $44 billion in help for the elderly, disabled veterans, the unemployed and businesses to the House-passed economic aid package. GOP senators banded together Wednesday to thwart the $205 billion plan, leaving Democrats with a difficult choice either to quickly accept a House bill they have said is inadequate or risk being blamed for delaying a measure designed as a swift shot in the arm for the lagging economy. The tally was 58-41 to end debate...

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton courted female voters on Tuesday with a plan to expand paid family leave, boost child-care funding and fight workplace discrimination against pregnant women. In a speech peppered with anecdotes from raising her 27-year-old daughter Chelsea, the former first lady who would be America's first woman president said her plan would cost $1.75 billion a year and be paid for by shutting down certain kinds of tax shelters without expanding the deficit. "The struggle to balance family and work can be simply overwhelming," the New York senator told a gathering of about...

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, noncitizens who legally obtained New York State driver’s licenses have been given licenses stamped “temporary visitor” along with the date their visa expired. No longer. The Spitzer administration three weeks ago quietly eliminated the state policy that required the special identification stamp on the driver’s licenses for noncitizens who are legally, though temporarily, residing in the United States. The policy change also eliminated the accompanying expiration date that was intended to show when the person’s legal right to be in the United States ended — raising the chance that a valuable form...

Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign gets kookier by the day. On Tuesday, she abandoned her widely ridiculed "baby bonds" in favor of a plan, funded by robbing the graves of "the rich," to give Americans earning less than $100,000 a year a 401(k), into which the government would deposit up to $1,000 annually. She apparently figured out babies don't vote. On Monday, she declared Sandy Berger would have "no official role" in her campaign. Her statement was meant to deflect criticism of her naming Mr. Berger as her unofficial, unpaid foreign-policy adviser. But his record of foreign-policy blunders is scary....

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — Democrats and their allies mapped out a strategy on Friday that they hoped would enable them to override President Bush’s expected veto of a bipartisan bill providing health insurance for 10 million children, most of them in low-income families. Democratic leaders said they would highlight the contrast between the president’s request for large sums of money for the Iraq war and his opposition to smaller sums for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as Schip. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said, “It’s ironic that in the very same week that the president says he’s...

WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers persisted Thursday in their efforts to persuade President Bush to set aside his veto threat of a large spending increase for a children's health insurance program. The Senate is expected later in the day to vote for a $35 billion increase in funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, a federal-state partnership that subsidizes health coverage for low-income families.

A Californian who set up a vote-swapping Web site for supporters of Ralph Nader and Al Gore in 2000, before the state shut it down with a threat of prosecution, said Tuesday he may try again next year now that a federal appeals court has ruled that online vote-trading agreements are constitutionally protected. It all depends, Jim Cody said, on a candidacy by Nader or some other third-party hopeful that might siphon away enough votes from the Democratic nominee to tip the scales to a Republican in one or more states. His short-lived Vote Swap2000.com was meant to counteract that...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WHBQ The FOX13 I-Team has discovered an undercover investigation into voting fraud in North Mississippi. The Mississippi Attorney General is trying to find out who's buying people's votes in Benton County

I watched the Democrat debate yesterday evening, not so much to learn something new, but because I have the innate curse of enjoying political speeches, even if those speeches grind against the very pit of my soul in both substance and concept. The majority of the debate uncovered no real surprises, but one particular answer to a question about drug testing sticks in my mind. The answer that Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd gave to a question about drug testing welfare recipients strikes hard at the very nature of the rampant disability and aggressive disease that infects the modern Democrat party,...

11 hours, 56 minutes ago U.S. Sen. Barack Obama says he has not softened his position on Iraq, despite suggestions to the contrary from other presidential camps and liberal blogs. The Democratic presidential candidate yesterday took issue with a weekend report suggesting that he believes that if President George Bush vetoes a withdrawal bill, Congress should quickly provide full funding for the war with no strings attached. Other campaigns privately pointed out The Associated Press's report and questioned if Obama has changed his stance. The liberal blog Daily Kos carried a headline Sunday stating, "Obama Caves to Bush." In a...

Kent Conrad's Web site proclaims that the North Dakota Democrat "has been a leading voice for fiscal responsibility" in Washington... ...$4.9 billion, which is the amount of emergency drought relief the parsimonious Mr. Conrad is attempting to shovel into a Senate military construction bill in this week's lame duck session. If this is the sort of "fiscal discipline" we can expect from the new Democratic majority, K Street ought to be popping the champagne corks. Farm-state Senators have been pushing for this handout for months, and the only good news is that they've modestly scaled back their demands. Nebraska Democrat...

(Madison, WI)â€¦.First it was â€śSmokes for Votes.â€ť Then it was â€śPastries for Votes.â€ť Now Democrats are continuing their assault on the health of voters by offering â€śWieners for votes.â€ť Democrats in Eau Claire are illegally offering free food in an effort to bribe people for their vote. Today, a complaint had to be filed against Democrat Kathleen Vinehoutâ€™s campaign for handing out free food in violation of Wisconsinâ€™s â€śelection briberyâ€ť law. The Executive Director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, Rick Wiley, says he doubts even free food will help Vinhoutâ€™s campaign. â€śApparently, Kathleenâ€™s campaign is so out of steam,...

Mayor Bill White today ordered a halt to a privately funded drive to offer flu vaccinations at early voting sites in Hispanic and black neighborhoods, amid conservative criticism that the effort would boost Democratic votes. Since Monday, the city had been offering the free vaccinations at four polling places around Houston under a national grant program, used in more than 20 other cities. White defended the program at a news conference today, saying public health was the city's only motive in launching the initiative. Still, he said he decided this morning to abandon the plan after today to avoid perception...

Party money bought backing in the past St. Clair County Democratic leadership has distributed election packets to countywide precinct committeemen, which include an affidavit stating that money from the party will not be used to buy votes. The unusual action follows the vote buying convictions in June of five East St. Louis politicians. They had helped distribute more than $70,000 received by city Democratic precinct committeemen two days before the 2004 election from the county Democratic organization. While St. Clair County Democratic Central Committee Chairman Robert Sprague could not be reached for comment, a fax received Monday from his Belleville...

WASHINGTON -- The Senate has agreed to put an additional $1 billion this year into a program to help poor people with energy costs, but only after overcoming resistance from warm state senators who said those suffering from summer heat weren't getting their fair share.The additional spending would increase to $3.1 billion the amount the federal government will have this year for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a decades-old program that subsidizes heating and cooling costs for poor families.The legislation, which still must be considered by the House, passed by a voice vote Tuesday, but only after a...

One of the more amusing lines in President Bush's State of the Union Address last month was his call for yet another commission to study the problem of entitlement spending. Entitlements are programs that do not require annual appropriations. The money is paid out automatically to anyone who meets the eligibility criteria. Spending cannot be capped because people have a legal right to their benefits. Hence, spending for entitlements can only be reduced by changing the basic law applying to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. There are two reasons why the Bush proposal cannot be taken seriously. First, he has...

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) plans to announce today that he will seek a ninth term, ending months of speculation the 87-year-old lawmaker was considering retiring next year to avoid a grueling re-election campaign.

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- Lebanon's finance minister on Sunday downplayed the Iraqi Defense Ministry's transfer of $500 million to a Beirut financial institution, saying he would expect such a transfer to be legal if it was made by the Iraqi government. In southern Iraq, the politician demanding a probe into Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan's decision to make the cash transfer said he would not flee his country. Ahmad Chalabi said he was staying despite Shaalan's threat to arrest him and turn him over to Interpol based on an old Jordanian bank fraud conviction.Finance Minister Elias Saba told the private...

GOP Complains About School Voting Over Alleged Ice Cream Bribe School Administrator Denies Any Wrongdoing POSTED: 10:41 am CST November 2, 2004 UPDATED: 11:58 am CST November 2, 2004 LUFKIN, Texas -- Lufkin-area Republicans are complaining about voting by residents from the local state school for the mentally disabled. The Lufkin Daily News reports the Angelina County GOP headquarters was told that Lufkin State School employees bribed students with ice cream. They also alleged improper use of a state van to take students to the poll for early voting. County Republican Chairman Dale Ingle alleges the school was trying to...

John Kerry's Crack the Vote Address (Satire)Presidential candidate John Kerry addresses thousands of addicts, many holding signs "WILL VOTE FOR CRACK" at a Crack the Vote rally in Washington D.C. on Saturday.My friends, I have a plan. It's a good plan. I was talking to Marion Barry (the b*tch set me up) just the other day. He asked me what my drug plan was. I told him that the President's drug plan was the wrong plan at the wrong place at the wrong time. The president refused to change his policy. The President made drug importation...

Thieves shattered a side window overnight at Lucas County Democratic headquarters in Toledo, stealing computers with sensitive campaign information and triggering concern of the local party's ability to deliver crucial votes on Nov. 2. (See URL for complete article) http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041013/NEWS03/410130378&SearchID=73187255382209